Tag Archives: Overcoming Bias

Fixing Academia Via Prediction Markets on Overcoming Bias

1 Reply

By Robin Hanson

When I first got into prediction markets twenty five years ago, I called them “idea futures”, and I focused on using them to reform how we deal with controversies in science and academia (see here, here, here, here). Lately I’ve focused on what I see as the much higher value application of advising decisions and reforming governance (see here, here, here, here). I’ve also talked a lot lately about what I see as the main social functions of academia (see here, here, here, here). Since prediction markets don’t much help to achieve these functions, I’m not optimistic about the demand for using prediction markets to reform academia.

But periodically people do consider using prediction markets to reform academia, as did Andrew Gelman a few months ago. And a few days ago Scott Alexander, who I once praised for his understanding of prediction markets, posted a utopian proposal for using prediction markets to reform academia. These discussions suggest that I revisit the issue of how one might use prediction markets to reform academia, if in fact enough people cared enough about gaining accurate academic beliefs. So let me start by summarizing and critiquing Alexander’s proposal.

Alexander proposes prediction markets where anyone can post any “theory” broadly conceived, like “grapes cure cancer.” (Key quotes below.) Winning payouts in such market suffer a roughly 10% tax to fund experiments to test their theories, and in addition some such markets are subsidized by science patron orgs like the NSF. Bettors in each market vote on representatives who then negotiate to pick someone to pay to test the bet-on theory. This tester, who must not have a strong position on the subject, publishes a detailed test design, at which point bettors could leave the market and avoid the test tax. “Everyone in the field” must make a public prediction on the test. Then the test is done, winners paid, and a new market set up for a new test of the same question. Somewhere along the line private hedge funds would also pay for academic work in order to learn where they should bet.

That was the summary; here are some critiques…

Read the full post at Overcoming Bias. 

0

Academic Stats Prediction Markets from Overcoming Bias

Leave a reply

By Robin Hanson

In a column, Andrew Gelman and Eric Loken note that academia has a problem:

Unfortunately, statistics—and the scientific process more generally—often seems to be used more as a way of laundering uncertainty, processing data until researchers and consumers of research can feel safe acting as if various scientific hypotheses are unquestionably true.

They consider prediction markets as a solution, but largely reject them for reasons both bad and not so bad. I’ll respond here to their article in unusual detail. First the bad:

Would prediction markets (or something like them) help? It’s hard to imagine them working out in practice. Indeed, the housing crisis was magnified by rampant speculation in derivatives that led to a multiplier effect.

Yes, speculative market estimates were mistaken there, as were most other sources, and mistaken estimates caused bad decisions. But speculative markets were the first credible source to correct the mistake, and no other stable source had consistently more accurate estimates. Why should the most accurate source should be blamed for mistakes made by all sources?

Allowing people to bet on the failure of other people’s experiments just invites corruption, and the last thing social psychologists want to worry about is a point-shaving scandal.

Read the full post at Overcoming Bias.

0